In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GT 230 are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3.

The GeForce GT 230 has a 110 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Texture Mapping Units than the 8600 GT. This results in the GeForce GT 230 providing 7 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GeForce GT 230 has a 110 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Render Output Units than the 8600 GT. This results in the GeForce GT 230 providing 6.1 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GeForce GT 230 was released over a year more recently than the 8600 GT, and so the GeForce GT 230 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the 8600 GT.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 and the GeForce GT 230 have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The GeForce GT 230 has 35.2 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the 8600 GT, which means that the memory performance of the GeForce GT 230 is noticeably better than the 8600 GT.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 has 32 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GT 230 has 48. However, the actual shader performance of the 8600 GT is 43 and the actual shader performance of the GeForce GT 230 is 78. The GeForce GT 230 having 35 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GeForce GT 230 delivers a noticeably smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the 8600 GT.

The GeForce GT 230 transistor size technology is 25 nm (nanometers) smaller than the 8600 GT. This means that the GeForce GT 230 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the 8600 GT.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 requires 46 Watts to run and the GeForce GT 230 requires 75 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the 8600 GT and a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the GeForce GT 230. The GeForce GT 230 requires 29 Watts more than the 8600 GT to run. The difference is not significant enough for the GeForce GT 230 to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the 8600 GT.